Picking up the pieces and putting something together

The California Supreme Court today upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 8 (called by some to be the Defense of Marriage Amendent, and other the Anti-Gay Marriage act).  The rhetoric on both sides is amping up, but I would like to submit a third option.

Let's drop the whole issue of marriage and start considering the concept of legal civil unions.

As we've seen, the faith community is pretty adamant about the theological concept of marriage and as long as the gay community continues to fight to apply that term to its unions, they will receive significant opposition to attaining equal rights in their unions.  In many countries around the world, most specifically in Europe, the government recognizes "civil unions" on the same level as traditional marriage.  In doing so, those countries have overcome any opposition from the faith community.  They may not like it, but they are willing to accept it.

Likewise, in California, polls have shown that the clear majority of voters would accept equal treatment between marriage and civil unions as long as the term remain separate.

Now we can start picking nits with a "separate but equal" argument but we have to ask, are we trying to get equal treatment under the law or legally imposed approval of a lifestyle.  If you are going for the former,  you have an easy path in front of you.  If you want the latter, get ready to divide our communities even more.

People of faith who were on the Pro Prop 8 side need to think about this as well.  You need to ask yourselves if you want to maintain the integrity of your theological terms, or do you want to impose a theocratic position on people who have not freely chosen your faith.

To me, it's a no brainer.  Let's start working this out.

Getting the job done

As I pointed out previously, the controversy over gay marriage in the US, especially in California, has isolated the faith community from those that community wants to reach. The gay population, in particular, will have nothing to do with the evangelical churches and have virtually closed their minds to the potential of ever joining that community, regardless of what any evangelical Christian might say.

And that's good news. Evangelicals, for most of the past 100 years, have relied on government to enforce its view of morality. They've done it through blue laws that hampered commerce on Sundays (except for restaurants that evangelicals like to visit for lunch after church). The laws sought by evangelicals are designed to control lifestyle choices that evangelicals look down on and generally avoid by practice, like alcohol and drug use, pornography, prostitution and, of course, homosexual practices. These are the bad sins. For the latter they like to point to Romans 1:27 as the justification for that point of view. But they conveniently look away from Romans 1:29-32. That passage points out that those that practice envy, strife, deceit and malice, gossips, betrayal, bullying and boasting are guilty of the same "sin" hoomosexuality.

Now of course we're not going to push for laws for those things...because we haven't been able to stop doing them. After all, gossip is part of our human nature, isn't it? It's not a choice, is it?

OK, I'm getting snarky here. The point is that we Christians have a responsibility to be examples, not sources of legislative direction. Jesus gave us the commission in Matthew 28 to go into the world and be examples of Christ. Some translations say "preach the Gospel" but the original definition of "preach" to demonstrate. That means example. He didn't say "get laws passed." He said to be examples. We have forgotten that. Oh, we try to be examples to the people in our church. In other words, we put on the image of being holy. But we rarely show the example of Christ to people outside the church.

1 John 2:6 says "Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived." How exactly did he live? Well, for one he never condemned anyone's lifestyle; not prostitutes, not thieves, not even corrupt rulers. Oh, wait. He did condemn one lifestyle. He condemned religious leaders and what we would call, holiness people. He would even insult them when he sat down to eat with them. Why? Because people who set a hard line on how people live close any discussion about the relative value of lifestyle decisions.

Second, when it comes to law, Jesus said in Matthew 22 that there are two laws that take precedence in life: Love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself. He said that in those two commandments is "ALL the law and the prophets. If that is all we concentrate on, everything else falls into place. We don't need any more laws in life. We need grace.

Our job, as representatives of the body of Christ, are to open the doors to relationship with Christ; to opening the opportunity to talk about destructive lifestyles and how to escape them; and demonstrating the same kind of tolerance (not acceptance or approval) that Jesus showed to people of all types.

The motto for the modern church needs to be: Get them saved and let God sort them out.

Self-inflicted wounds with purpose

In the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul sets out the premise that "God chose what is nonsense in the world to make the wise feel ashamed. God chose what is weak in the world to make the strong feel ashamed." It's a wrap of a longer section on division and how to get around it. After almost 2000 years, the church (organized) is still trying to figure it out. If we're all lucky, they may never figure it out.

When you read the history of organized religion, you wonder how it has lasted this long. Seems very silly. The controversy over gay marriage is but the latest round. The thing is, gay marriage is just the symptom of the real issue. the real issue is over the preeminence of law or grace. The bad news is that law always "seems" to win because law is always the basis of worldly "wisdom." That wisdom, however, is what God considers to be foolishness.

Organized religion has relied on government for 1700 years to enforce it's view of morality. As I mentioned before, it started fairly innocently with Constantine's request of the church to police marriage (looks like we've come almost full circle on that one). That passed on the through the growth of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Martin Luther tried to bring grace back into dominance, but reformers like Knox brought law right back.

In modern times, the church required the government to ban the teaching of evolution (The church won the Scopes Monkey Trial, you know) formed the anti-abortion lobby and now is fighting gay marriage. But if the church had been doing its job, none of these controversies would be with us right now. Abortion would be legal but much rarer than it is today. Creationism would be taught in school alongside evolution and even gay rights would cease to be an issue. All of these controversies were brought about by the church relying on the government to protect it's view of morality. Initially they were successful. but every time the church gave over its moral authority to the government, their position was weakened and a wall between the church and the society it tries to reach grew thicker and taller.

"What the heck is the church's job, then?" I hear some people ask. Good question. I'l answer that next.

The camel's in the tent

There's an old Arab proverb that you should not allow a camel to get his nose in your tent, because soon after, the camel will take over the tent.

I feel very much like that in the issue about Proposition 8 in California.

One of the primary arguments for Prop 8 was that the definition of marriage was laid out in the Bible. That's a fallacy of course, because what the Bible lays out is the relationship between men and women, not the definition of marriage. A Biblical interpretation encourages polygamy (for example, Abraham, Jacob, David, etc.)

What we know as the traditional form of marriage was codified under the Roman Emperor Constantine. Constantine had a problem. Romans were marrying and divorcing with alarming alacrity. the tenuous nature of marriage made it difficult to know who owned what when marriages failed and people remarried. And that meant it became difficult to know who to tax. So Constantine looked around the empire for an answer and noticed that Christian and Jewish families were absolutely rock stable. He called the leaders of those communities in and said he was going to put the power to define, monitor and perform marriage in the empire. The idea was to put the fear of God into the populace. It worked, of course. Divorces dropped precipitously. Soon after Constantine converted, and the Holy Roman Empire was off and running.

That's where we got the modern definition of marriage as between a man and a woman and what the fight is over. Not the Bible.

For almost 1800 years the definition of marriage has resided in the religious community of the Western world... Until Tuesday, November 4, 2008. On that day, the church gave the definition back to the states of California, Arizona and Florida.

The next step is the definition of what is a man and what is a woman. Think I'm crazy? Coming up on ABC, Barbara Walters is going to be doing a special on Thomas Beatie, a former woman who got a sex change operation, but kept the reproductive organs. It's title is: "What is a man? What is a woman?"

As a Christian, are you weirded out by that? If you voted for Proposition 8, too bad. You no longer have a say. You gave it to the state. Now that the state has the authority to define marriage, it has to define gender now. Without the input of the church. And with that, the camel is in the tent.

More to come...